A Phased Array-based Method for Damage Detection and Localization in Thin Plates

A method for damage localization based on the phased array idea has been developed. Four arrays of transducers are used to perform a beam-forming procedure. Each array consists of nine transducers placed along a line, which are able to excite and register elastic waves. The A₀Lamb wave mode has been chosen for the localization method. The arrays are placed in such a way that the angular difference between them is 45° and the rotation point is the middle transducer, which is common for all the arrays. The idea has been tested on a square aluminium plate modeled by the Spectral Element Method. Two types of damage were considered, namely distributed damage, which was modeled as stiffness reduction, and cracks, modeled as separation of nodes between selected spectral elements. The plate is excited by a wave packet. The whole array system is placed in the middle of the plate. Each linear phased array in the system acts independently and produces maps of a scanned field based on the beam-forming procedure. These maps are made of time signals (transferred to space domain) that represent the difference between the damaged plate signals and those from the intact plate. An algorithm was developed to join all four maps. The final map is modified by proposed signal processing algorithm to indicate the damaged area of the plate more precisely. The problem for damage localization was investigated and exemplary maps confirming the effectiveness of the proposed system were obtained. It was also shown that the response of the introduced configuration removes the ambiguity of damage localization normally present when a linear phased array is utilized. The investigation is based exclusively on numerical data.